How to deal with challenging patients in your dental practice

Do you have any patients that, when you see them on the schedule, you get a pit in your stomach and hope they no-show? How often does this happen? For most offices, it thankfully is a rare occurrence, but maybe happens once a month or so. So how do you handle this patient?

I find in many cases, most offices grin and bear it. Often it ruins the day for the doctor and the entire team, as people react poorly to the person and the stress they bring to the office. Sadly, as an outcome of this person in your office, I think that it becomes a lost day, meaning, your performance with the rest of your patients and team becomes so poor that your case acceptance for the day is probably pretty ugly. I have to admit I have never measured this phenomenon, but I would bet money I am pretty close. How would I recommend you handle this in the future? Fire that patient.

Where do I start when growing my dental practice?

So you just attended our kickoff event course or are looking at what you can do to accomplish your practice goals and wondering where to start.  Here is how we do it.  We start by analyzing your practice to look for the best opportunities to have significant impact and quickly.  Generally speaking, the challenges in practices fall into one of the following categories:  cash flow, new patient flow, hygiene schedule or case acceptance or of course a combination of them. When looking at the gap(s) in these areas of a practice we look for the biggest and quickest areas growth in each category for that practice.  It of course varies widely for every practice.  Once we have established the potential return in all of those areas, it becomes simple to decide where to start.  The next question is, what to do about the challenge in that area of the practice?

Scheduling for Success in Your Dental Office

Last week we spoke about how to structure your daily schedule for the most success. As we have mentioned many times, you have to start with the end in mind. What do you want the practice to look like? What would your dream schedule look like?

Best Practices in Dental Office Scheduling

When looking at the best practices for how to arrange your schedule in a dental office, I want to start with an exercise that Stephen Covey did years ago. He filled a jar with rocks and then asked if the jar was full - some naturally said "yes". Then he added small pebbles to the jar and they fell down in the cracks and filled some additional space. He then asked if the jar was full - some said "yes". He then added sand, which fell down in the cracks and filled the empty spaces and then asked yet again if it is full. Some again said "yes". He then added water to the jar, which of course filled the extra spaces, to which he now agreed "now it's full".

If, on the other hand, you were to fill the jar with sand first and then ask the audience if it was full of course all would say "yes". With this scenario in mind, he then posed the question of, "now could you add any rocks to this jar?" The obvious answer was "no". You have no left over space to put anything into the jar.

Anyone who has followed me for a while understands that I believe WOMEN make the majority of decisions as it relates to dentistry.  This article certainly supports it.  This is a great read if you are interested in connecting to women more within your dental practice.  

For anyone wondering, I do not claim to fully understand women:)  I only claim to try to and appreciate them.